Designer Finds That It’s Not Only Clothes That Make the Man

Clothes have been good to Gregg Pellegrini. When he opened his 7th Avenue showroom in New York in the 1980s, it wasn’t uncommon for a buyer to purchase a dozen hand-beaded Tony Chase evening gowns for $15,000 each or a rack of $1,800 silk charmeuse dresses. Sales like that enabled Pellegrini to drop $500 for dinner, hire a limo to attend a Bruce Springsteen concert--in Philadelphia--and rent a condo in St. Martin.

“Everything was over the top,” says Pellegrini, 37, of his Central Park West lifestyle during much of the 1980s. But then, late in the decade, a rash of department stores filed for Chapter 11. Grunge turned chic. Jogging outfits became ubiquitous. And women who once consulted Vogue started taking fashion cues from Roseanne.

Overnight, the high-end fashion biz that had thrilled and enriched Pellegrini was suddenly “less exciting than digging a ditch.”

Pellegrini was trying to sell high-end women’s clothing to retail stores at a time when Americans were content to wear jeans. To stay in business, he crisscrossed the country schlepping trunks filled with samples. He held fashion shows at retail stores. He started selling lower-priced lines of print polyester dresses.

Pellegrini thought he might escape his woes by leaving Manhattan. Instead of peace of mind, a move from Central Park West to horse country in New Jersey just added four irritating hours to his daily commute. Winter at his would-be Walden was less than idyllic. At the end of one foul February day, Pellegrini slogged his way home. He arrived at 10 p.m. to find that his pipes were frozen, then spent the next three hours trying to thaw them with a hair dryer.

Two months later, Pellegrini moved to Los Angeles. True, the weather was better, but in the spring of 1994, the California economy was worse than New York’s. Pellegrini persevered. He opened a showroom. He found clients. Business picked up. But he still heard a voice inside him asking, “Will it ever be fun again?”

Pellegrini--Italian for pilgrim--then did what many seekers do. He decided to look within for the answer. He flew to New York to spend the last few days of December 1996 and New Year’s Day 1997 at an ashram in the Catskills.

When he returned to Los Angeles, Pellegrini felt as if someone had changed the prescription of his eyeglasses. He stopped representing clients who brought him nothing but headaches. He found a business partner, Jody Hughes, to share the load. The pair leased a showroom with blond wood floors in the California Mart, center of the Los Angeles garment industry. Pellegrini says having a partner leaves him able to focus on the aspects of the business that he finds most rewarding. He now has the time to court new clients, develop foreign markets and expand the company’s product line.

He has made changes in his personal life too. Instead of starting each morning with a latte and rushing to work, Pellegrini now begins his day by sitting in meditation. Some mornings he clips a fistful of gardenias from his garden to place on an altar in his Beverly Hills home.

“These quiet moments carry me through everything else,” Pellegrini says. That attitude helps, because in the fashion trade there are five seasons--fall, holiday, resort, spring and summer--which means that “market,” with all its chaos and excess, takes place nearly every other month.

On a recent afternoon, Pellegrini and Hughes scurried about their showroom preparing for market--a five-day cyclone when they put 500 seasonal items on display. Forty boxes of clothes that needed to be labeled and pressed arrived less than 48 hours before the pair were to introduce their new fashion line to hundreds of buyers and members of the fashion press.

“Obviously, market is chaotic. But, frankly, the problems that once drove me crazy now don’t seem so daunting,” Pellegrini says. “My attitude now is rather than let the business run me, I run the business.”

Hughes called Pellegrini over to get his opinion as to whether an avocado-colored silk sheath dress by designer Beverly Siri looked better next to a velvet Tahari evening dress or a duchesse satin crop jacket by Heather Scott. The phone rang, but before Hughes picked it up, Pellegrini quipped, “Make that sale, so I can play polo this weekend.”

Pellegrini’s passion for polo has also renewed his enthusiasm for his career. Something happens, he says, when he swaps his black Gucci suede shoes for his riding boots.

“There is something about having fun that changes your body chemistry,” he says. “For the two to three hours I’m playing polo, the business doesn’t exist. I am 100% focused on the game.”

For Pellegrini, lessons learned on the polo field or in meditation help him on the job. What they teach him, he says, is to not be distracted by a whirlwind of activity around him and, instead, to focus on the task at hand.

“It’s so easy to gripe or blame the other guy,” says Pellegrini. “Meditation and polo give me a sense of confidence and leave me feeling clearheaded. As a result, no matter what happens, I feel like I am equal to the task.”

He says it almost doesn’t matter if he wins or loses. He finds it ironic that when business was lousy, he never dared take a day off. Now that business is booming, he is playing polo three times a week and doing volunteer work on weekends.

“For years, I went to work and felt like I was being put through a meat grinder,” Pellegrini says. “Now I just feel that rather than wearing me out, it energizes me.”